lauantai 28. marraskuuta 2015

If you need a quick, tiny and headless Linux for Raspberry Pi try Raspbian Jessie Lite. No graphical user interface, command line only. In addition Lite in an official distribution supported by Raspberry Pi foundation.

Off I went and tried newly installed app. I placed my phone side by side with NFC-based device in the nearest K-market. And indeed I got my bonus. If your phone doesn't do anything move phone a little bit so that NFC circuit (of your phone) is in the right position.

I guess the only downside is K-plussa card app is always there in the background of the memory of your phone. And NFC is also always on draining your battery (?).

torstai 26. marraskuuta 2015

A new Raspberry Pi Zero has been introduced. It's three times smaller than Raspi 2. When looking at the performance Zero has 1 GHz one core ARM processor and 512 MB RAM memory.

At the moment I have no idea how much Zero is going to cost. They are saying it's very inexpensive costing only 5 $ (excluding taxes?). However when Zero is shipped to Finland where I live the price will be... wild guess is 20-30 €?

keskiviikko 25. marraskuuta 2015

IBM XT booted! Two floppies (?) with IBM DOS 3.3 inside. Still have to find out if my PC has a hard disk inside. I've found floppy drives A: and B: . Forgot to try C: . Keyboard has those åäö-hats which are important for people like me living in Finland.

In the next issue: applications, floppies, which DOS runs on PC with 512 KB RAM?

keskiviikko 18. marraskuuta 2015

Debian Linux 8 (Jessie) came available this autumn. It still runs on an old PC, in my case Asus EeePC laptop, with only 4 GB SSD hard disk.

Get ISO

In order to install Debian you need to download the ISO-file and burn it on a USB-stick. I chose Debian Netinstall which is available here: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/ . There are number of burning sofware out there. Use Win32DiskImager, UNetbootin on Windows or command dd on Linux to prepare your bootable Debian USB-stick.

Setup

Make sure you tap down Esc while powering your EeePC in order to boot from USB. Then, off you go and install Debian. There is nothing much to tell about this phase. If you are setting up Linux for the first time pay attention to every screen you see.

Aftermath

Since there is not that much space available, only 4 GB hard disk, you have to compromise. I decided to wipe out GIMP and LibreOffice. They both are too heavy for my old EeePC. This is how you do it what comes to LibreOffice:

lauantai 7. marraskuuta 2015

It's been a long time since I've played with Legos. Robots are something everyone is talking about nowadays. With my colleague it took approx 4 hours to build a Lego robot. In the end of the day there was a remote controlled robot standing on the table. In addition, test code was driven. I'm very pleased Lego EV3 robot is now there up and running. Next, we need to figure out how to program our robot. There is a coding environment available for Mac and Windows for free. So why not listen to Kraftwerk's The robots ;P.

Music Television is going to broadcast live and 360 their annual gala later this autumn

You can create 360 pics of your own with Google Camera app and send them to Google Street View

3D glasses have been around for a long time. This time is different. Now it's possible to create something own, not just enjoy 360 games and movies. What's best, you can look at your 360 pics with cardboard glasses immediately after shooting. That's why it's easy to announce Google cardboard glasses the product of the year 2015!

perjantai 6. marraskuuta 2015

If you have a spare laptop/PC you can easily turn it into a Chromebook. Neverware's version of Chromium OS called CloudReady has a super easy built-in installer. Installing CloudReady on hard disk is a task with no pain.

First you'll need a USB memory stick with CloudReady (i.e. Chromium OS) inside. Follow the steps I took in an earlier blog post. Boot your laptop from the memory stick.

Once you get CloudReady up and running log in with your Gmail account. Click in the down-right corner and choose to setup CloudReady on hard disk. You'll be asked if you are 100 % sure. Yes, you'll want to install CloudReady.

The installation will take ~ 20 minutes. After that your laptop will boot and you can start using CloudReady.

Boot your laptop from the stick. This way you'll get CloudReady up and running in live mode.

Now you can log in with your Gmail account and start to use CloudReady. But that's not all! You can install CloudReady on hard disk! I'll be telling how to that in my later post. So stay tuned for more information!

In case you need a display which shows full web pages without any address fields then FullPageOS is for you. In addition, you can contact your display (and raspberry Pi) via ssh and change the contect remotely.

Ok, where can I get it?

The latest image based on Raspbian Linux can be found here: http://docstech.net/FullPageOS/ . Make sure the whole image is downloaded. I had to use wget since my browser didn't finish the job. If in doubt there is MD5 available to make sure the image is ok.

To make wifi work edit the file fullpageos-network.txt which you can find in the directory /boot. In case you are using LAN-cable there is no need to edit fullpageos-network.txt.

Place the SD-card in your Pi and boot FullPageOS. Login via SSH using the following user and password; pi and raspberry. Now, configure FullPageOS like you do in Raspbian using sudo raspi-config.

Finally, edit the file /boot/fullpageos.txt which tells the OS which web address opens when Raspberry Pi and FullPageOS boot. Bear in mind FullPageOS let's user to browse any web page! Ok, there is no address field... which is not stopping anyone!

Tip: If you need to know your current IP boot process echoes IP on screen for a second. That's an easy way to find out whether you have an IP or not.

That's it!

Wait, does it work? Did you try it?

It does! I did! Look at the picture below!

Edit: Translation bar showed up. I chose "Never translate Finnish". Not showing anymore. I heard it's a bug. They are working on it!